


I want to tell you

by bellofthetolppl



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Muteness, Sign Language, and bellamy is there to comfort her, basically after 6x10 clarke wakes up and she can't talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:22:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23142388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellofthetolppl/pseuds/bellofthetolppl
Summary: For the prompt request:A prompt for you, should you desire to fill it. Mute Clarke, with Bellamy soothing her/helping her. Maybe she lost her ability to speak bc of josie (or another reason). Fic can be with or without telepathy (Bellamy being able to read her mind). Writer's choice. I just love how you write canon divergent hurt/comfort! Thanks for what you've written so far, too!I decided to go with the scenario where there is no telepathy so just hurt/comfort!You can find me on Tumblr @jasperjoordan
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 11
Kudos: 195





	I want to tell you

No one know how or why it happens.

And honestly, Bellamy’s not even thinking about the fact that anything could be possibly wrong with her when she takes in her first breath and throws herself in his arms.

Her heart’s beating loud and clear against his chest, his arms are wrapped around her so tight, he knows that technically, he’s probably making her breathing harder for her, but she’s there, she’s alive, safe.

She gasps for breath in his ear and he holds her like this for more than five or ten minutes even if the pose they’re both in is extremely uncomfortable. 

To someone else it might look weird but he didn’t care who was watching, if Octavia and Gabriel were still even in the room anymore.

_All he cared about was her._

Clarke. 

_**His Clarke, alive, back.** _

He got her.

When finally she pulls away a little, he’s so stunned and desperate to look at her face, to cup it, feel her warm cheeks, look at her beautiful blue eyes that bore the tiredness of hundreds of years that he doesn’t realize that she’s opening her mouth and trying to talk except…

_**No sound comes out.** _

And then everything changes in a matter of seconds.

He sees the realization dawn on her-she’s trying to talk, moving her lips, but again, there’s nothing. 

Her hand shoots to her neck and she presses hard on it almost violently, as if trying to squeeze whatever sound she can come up with and probably causing herself pain but no matter what, nothing comes out. 

The next thing he acknowledges, before he can even realize what was happening himself was the panic flashing in her eyes and her hands gripping his.

Her lips move, mouthing a frantic, scared.

_**“Bellamy!”** _

“Clarke!” he speaks up and grips her arms back in return before he looks around and upon not finding Gabriel there, he looks back at her only to realize she’s been moving her lips trying to speak to him but he wasn’t looking.

“I’ll get Gabriel!” he promises and rushes out of the tent only to return back with him a second later. 

“What’s wrong with her? She can’t talk!” Bellamy spills frantically while Clarke’s eyes who are full of fear and panic stare between him and Gabriel who tries to remain calm.

He puts his hands on her neck, checks the muscles there, then asks her to try and say something but when she fails, she breaks and the tears spill down her face.

Bellamy reaches to grab her hand and she holds onto him for dear life, pulling him close on the cot.

He doesn’t hesitate to sit next to her and wrap his arm around her back as if to shield her from any harm but all she keeps doing is frantically, fearfully throwing her head back and forth between Gabriel and him and trying to say _**something, anything.**_

And upon finding that she can’t, no matter how much she pushes herself, she gets even more scared, starts trembling, waving her arms, struggling.

She goes into full panic mode when Gabriel tries to make her lay down so he can connect her to the machines again and put the fancy weird headband on her and she starts fighting him and Bellamy.

And when Clarke fought, she fought with everything in her.

She kicked and she flailed her hands and she even managed to punch Gabriel in the face which caused him to jump away from the cot. 

That in turn gave Bellamy the opportunity to grab her by the shoulders and try to steady her.

“Clarke! Clarke, look at me! Clarke, stop it dammit, please!” he begged and she tried to listen to him but still kept struggling against him, her lips moving, her head tossing, sweat covering her face once again.

“Clarke!” he raises his voice but she won’t listen, still tossing herself left and right trying to free herself from this. He lets go of her wrists and instead cups her face.

“Look at me! Look at me!” he begs and something in him must sound very desperate, very broken because she stills and stops trying to get away, her eyes falling on him, her mouth still half opened, gasping, struggling to pull air in and to move, to talk, to say something. 

Anything.

His thumbs rub over her cheeks and he whispers quiet shushes and holds her face in his big palms.

“It’s okay, it’s fine, I’m here. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.” he repeats it over and over and over again like a mantra until her body goes a little slack in the cot at least for a moment. 

“Focus on me, okay? Let’s breathe, in and out, come on.” he brushes a bit more forcefully until she starts complying and when she’s finally beginning to somewhat calm down, he sits by her on the cot but never lets go. 

“That’s good, you’re doing great.” he says and when he looks around for Gabriel he nods at him upon finding him pressing a cold cloth to his mouth and wiping at the blood, so he tosses it away and approaches her. 

“Now you have to let him check you, okay? I know you’re scared but I’ll be right here. You can hold my hand-” he looks at Gabriel for permission “Right?”

“Absolutely.” Gabriel promises and when he comes closer, Clarke moves away from him as if on instinct, which in turn makes Bellamy’s heart leap in his chest.

”I won’t hurt you.” he promises but it does little to soothe Clarke and in a way Bellamy understands that. 

If he had just come back to his body after fighting with Josephine and then woke up to the great love of her enemy’s life promising to help her, he’d be freaked out too.

“Hey-” Bellamy directs her attention back to him with a soft smile “I know you’re scared but he helped us bring you back, you know that. He won’t do anything to hurt you and if he does-” Bellamy glances at him, for a moment throwing the man an angry vengeful look with eyebrows furrowed which apparently scares Gabriel because he raises his hands and says seriously.

“After what I just witnessed, I wouldn’t even think about it.” he means the CPR but Clarke doesn’t know how desperately he fought for her so he feels his cheeks hot and knows that he’s probably red all over but doesn’t look away from Clarke, because this wasn’t about him or his feelings.

“I’ll check your brain and then your neck and voice strings again and we’ll try to figure this out okay?” Gabriel explains but Clarke still doesn’t give him a confirmation, looking at Bellamy with confusion instead.

He takes her hand and holds it close.

“Okay, here’s what we’ll do.” he suggests “If at any point you feel pain or want to stop this I want you to squeeze my hand real hard, alright?” she nods at that, just barely but enough to show him that.

“That will be a hard _**“No”**_ , okay?” she nods at that “Good. And if you just want to say _**“Yes”**_ , rub your thumb over my hand like this” he gestures with his own hoping it’d soothe her, knowing that such movements usually calmed the body at least a bit even in such a dire situation.

She agrees with a fast nod again and lets Gabriel come closer and do his exam. He connects her head to the wires she had before and turns the monitors on again, this time it’s not just her heart beat and blood pressure that they see, but also a picture of her brain.

He doesn’t understand all of what Gabriel does to her, there’s not much he says really, mostly monitors things, eyes pierced on the screens, hand scribbling down data on a clipboard that Bellamy has no idea where he even got from. 

Clarke’s scared but she isn’t squeezing his hand now. 

Still he keeps both of his covering hers, pulls a chair to the cot and every time Gabriel murmurs something to himself, pushes it closer to her.

Then he tests her movement which means Bellamy has to drop her hand but he refuses to.

“You can use just one of her arms.” Gabriel sighs and Bellamy huffs.

“See? She’s gripping me pretty hard, I think that she can use this one.” he carefully raises the hand he was holding and Clarke spares him a light smile, then turns her head to Gabriel who’s checking her other arm from shoulder to fingers and nods at him that she’s okay.

He moves to her legs then, her toes, back up listening to her heart and lungs and finally puts his hands on her neck again and making her open her mouth to check inside her throat.

When he’s all done he sits on his tree legged chair near all the still beeping machines measuring her heartbeat which Bellamy strangely has gotten used to simply because it meant that she was there with him, that she was alive, and runs his hand through his short hair.

“From what I can tell it seems that you have some sort of brain damage, probably due to the extraction of Josephine’s mind chip and the surgical mesh that was inside you that kept you actually alive. I can’t tell how it all happened…neuroscience is a complicated thing but it seems that your speech nerves were also severely damaged in the process.”

“Can you reverse it? Help her talk again?” Bellamy is the one to voice all of Clarke’s questions. 

It’s like with the one look she threw at him, he just knew what she wanted to ask.

The silence is answer enough. Gabriel opens his mouth but doesn’t say anything right away and Clarke’s face falls.

“I…I’m sorry, I don’t think there’s anything to be done. Even if we had the conditions to perform a brain surgery, judging by the tests-” he motions at the screen still showing her brain “I just don’t think it’s going to change anything.”

“You think or you know?” Bellamy pushes again standing up now “There’s a big difference.”

“As I said-” he sighs tiredly “The damage is really severe. You can’t fix the brain, it’s not a bone you can heal and you can’t tell the nerves to just magically restore their functions.” he reaches to touch Clarke but when she shivers and pulls closer to Bellamy again he drops his hand.

“I’m sorry, Clarke.”

She squeezes her eyes shut and the tears stream down her pale cheeks.

“I’ll give you two a moment.” Gabriel says quietly making his way out and Bellamy doesn’t wait for him to leave before he’s sitting on the cot again, pushing her head to his chest and rocking her back and front like a little kid needing to fall asleep.

She can’t make a sound, not even a grunt or a gasp or sob. 

Nothing at all. 

And his heart clenches at the thought of her not even being able to properly express her grief.

She may not make a sound but she’s breaking apart.

Her arms wrap tightly around his back and her tears wet his black shirt.

He talks to her and honestly, he doesn’t remember what he says and he’s not sure she’s listening but she must be, because she grips him tighter.

So tight, he feels her nails dig into his back and he wants to cry too, wants to break down too, but realizes he really doesn’t have the right to, not when she was going through the fact that she won’t be able to talk again, probably ever.

Finally, what feels like hours later and she still hasn’t stopped crying, he maneuvers them onto the cot and pulls her over his chest. 

She cries and cries and cries and then finally when Gabriel comes in again to check on them Bellamy looks at her and with a silent plea, without having to say anything, he gives her a shot that will put her to sleep.

She’s scared when she sees the needle but Bellamy holds her hand and looks at her.

“Shh, it’s going to be fine. I’m not leaving you, okay?” she nods and Gabriel carefully cleans the inside of her hand before pinching her skin.

She’s out barely seconds later but Bellamy waits another half an hour before he carefully picks her up and takes her to a more comfortable and big cot that Gabriel had prepared for her.

His sister comes in and out, talks to him, but he barely listens, mostly focusing on holding her hand and looking at her chest, making sure that she was still breathing.

Now that she was untangled from all of the machines, he felt even more anxious as if at any point she could just stop existing-her heart would stop and her lungs wouldn’t pull oxygen to keep her alive and he’ll have to do CPR again to bring her back.

How could he be sure she’ll be okay?

Especially after she woke up unable to speak. 

What if something else happened? What if she lost her sight or hearing? What if the effects of what she went through showed later, in hours, days, weeks? What if she got worse and-

No, he couldn’t think like that.

She’d be fine. He was here to protect her and make sure she’s okay. 

_**She couldn’t die.** _

_**Not again.** _

So his eyes remain pinned on her and he doesn’t fall asleep. 

He forgets about everything and everyone around him. 

He knows his sister comes and tells him Madi and the rest of the squad are coming to Gabriel’s camp after successfully escaping Sanctum, that Raven figured out how to kick Sheidheda out of the kid’s head and remove the flame. That Murphy and Emori were fine and so were the rest of them. 

He knows they come later that day because he can hear their voices outside but he never joins them, leaving his sister to explain everything to Madi and the others.

At some point no matter how good he has always been at staying awake since he was a child and they were living in a constant stress of having Octavia found out, he falls asleep.

Then wakes up what seems half an hour later from a nightmare, thinking she stopped breathing again and his hand reaches to check her pulse, not trusting his eyes showing her chest move up and down.

She moves around the cot, has her own nightmares, wakes up but falls very fast again. 

Gabriel finds him checking in on her pulse for the hundredth time that night and rests his hand on his shoulder.

“She’ll be okay.” he promises.

“You don’t know that.”

“Her vitals are good, so is her blood pressure and her breathing.” Bellamy raises an eyebrow in confusion “I’ve been sneaking in here while you were passed out to make sure everything’s fine.”

“Thank you.” Bellamy nods gratefully “For everything you’ve done for us…for her.”

“You were the one to bring her back, not me.” Gabriel reminds him and Bellamy is surprised when he pulls a chair and sits by his side, looking at Clarke “Now comes the hard part, though.” Bellamy nods at that. “She’ll need you by her side.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s good, but also make sure you take care of yourself too.”

“I’m fine.” 

“Yeah, your sister told me you’ll say that.” Bellamy’s head snaps at those words. Since when were those two discussing him and Clarke? 

“But I mean it…for you to be able to help her, you have to help yourself first. Rest, eat.” he nods at the cot on the other side of the tent “Sleep.”

“That’s too far from her.” Bellamy says anxiously

“We can move it” Gabriel suggests but Bellamy shakes his head stubbornly.

“I’m used to not sleeping for long periods of time.”

Gabriel sighs, giving up the fight for now and standing up again.

“I’ve arranged more tents for the rest of your people and my children will show them around-all the things they should stay away from and how they can help our camp but they’re okay for now so you don’t need to worry about it.”

“And Madi?”

“She’s okay, I checked her out. Just pretty exhausted so she should sleep and eat to get her strength back but I believe she’ll be alright.” Bellamy nods gratefully and Gabriel moves his chair away to give him his space to stretch his legs again if he decided to “I’ll be in the tent to your right if you need me, okay?”

With that he leaves and Bellamy’s finally alone in the tent, no sounds inside, only the occasional cackle of woods in a fire outside, someone’s quiet talks but they go down in an hour or two. 

Octavia brings him and Clarke food but he doesn’t touch his and he refuses to wake her up for that right now, knowing she’ll be too exhausted to eat, opting to save that battle for tomorrow.

At some point at night he notices she’s shivering, so he takes off his cardigan and throws it over her. 

She cuddles on herself like a small child and fists the cardigan with her hand, tucking it between her cheek and chest, breathing it in which makes him smile. 

Sometimes he forgot how young she still was, how she was supposed to have her whole life ahead of her, how fucked up everything has always been for her even before she came to earth and _**he wishes, he so desperately wishes he could kick all the pain away from her, grab it, shake it, make it leave her alone so she could have nothing but peace.**_

Sanctum was supposed to be a new beginning but instead it led to her body being snatched and then after she managed to fight her way back to him again, she was left unable to speak.

He honestly didn’t know how she would deal with that and as strong as she was he feared this would be the final straw to breaking her. 

But in that moment, with her hand still in his, he promised himself that if she falls, he’ll be there to catch her this time.

* * *

The next few days go on like a fog to him. 

She wakes up, mostly cries, then falls back asleep. 

He knows that she needs that time to fall apart, to let her tears out, to grief so she could somehow stand back on her feet, even if wobbly. 

What scares him is the part after that one which comes very fast. 

Her tears dry, her face falls down and goes blank and she lays curled up in bed, refusing to move at all.

He knows that very well, having experienced it on the Ark after Praimfaya himself. 

But it was different. 

Though his heart was broken, he still could talk even if he didn’t want to.

On the fifth day he decides he has to take some measures, so in the morning he comes back in the tent with a small package in his hands.

“Come on, princess, time to get up.” he says circling to the other side of the cot and taking her wrist, tugging her into a sitting position.

She makes a face, purses her lips, shakes her head like all the days before, but this time he won’t take her bullshit. 

He had to do something or he’d lose her and not in the physical sense, at least not at first.

Jasper flashes through his mind and that makes him pull a bit more forcefully.

Finally, when he has her sitting, legs hanging off the cot, he settles down opposite of her and dumps his package.

“So, since you can’t communicate in any other way right now, I figured you’ll still want to kick my ass somehow so I got you this-” he pulls out a yellow notebook and a pen. “It’s not ideal, but it’ll have to do until you get the hang of this-” the next thing he pulls out is a very old kind of washed out and really ruffled …study guide? 

She squints her eyes trying to make sense of the title-all the colorful pictures of figures of kids and plush toys were mostly erased from overuse but the title remained.

_“A simple guide to American Sign Language”_

Her head shots to him, eyebrows raised in confusion and surprise.

“I know, I’m awesome right.”

She slaps his chest and he chuckles but when she sees her smile at his stupidity, his heart feels a little big lighter. 

He gives her a moment eyes moving from the study guide to the pencil and the yellow notebook he got her and when she picks it up and starts scribbling something down, he dares feel hope for the first time in days.

“Where did you get that?” it said when she moves it so he could see.

He gives her a boyish shrug and rubs the back of his neck shyly.

“Gabriel found it actually. Said when he left Sanctum he managed to snatch a bunch of medical books he knew he’d need. This ended up somewhere between the pile he was frantically trying to steal.”

Clarke nods and takes it, going through the pages her hands shaking a bit as she does.

He knew what was going through her mind-giving her this was also yet another confirmation that this was it for her-from now on she had to have a whole different life. 

A life where she couldn’t talk or express herself the way she used to, a life where, like Gabriel told him, people will look at her and even if she gestured, even if she wrote her thoughts down, they wouldn’t see her. 

She’d become a ghost.

Yeah, well not to him.

_**Never to him.** _

“It’ll be hard, I know but I actually practiced some myself in the past few days and I think we can work on it together.” he explains, reaching to squeeze her wrist. 

She lets her head hang low but he knows her eyes are on their hands.

“When I was a kid I had this boy in my class who…” he stops for a second “he couldn’t talk either so I studied some back then too and I am remembering a few things.”

She picks up the pen again and contemplates what she’s going to write for a moment too long. 

A moment in which his heart is in his neck and his own fingers shake a bit.

When she turns the notebook to him he laughs.

_**"NERD!"**_ Is what is says and he chuckles.

“Yeah, yeah, like you weren’t a straight A student, princess.” he pokes her ribs just for the fun of it and she smiles, feeling ticklish and falling forward to his chest. 

He catches her shoulder and moves closer giving her a serious look now.

“I know this is…hard to put it mildly but I want you to know that no matter what happens, I’ll be here for you okay?”

She lets out something of a sigh which is just air tickling his neck before picking the pen again and scribbling something down.

“That’s what worries me.” he reads out loud “Why?” she writes down something again before showing it to him.

“I don’t want you to have to do this.” he reads and furrows his eyebrows “Bullshit, princess. I don’t care what you have to say or how you push me. I let this-” he swallows hard “I let this happen to you.” she scrunches her nose at that “I should’ve protected you the moment we figured out they had any interest in you because of the nightblood and I didn’t.”

“It’s not your fault.” she writes down and he shakes his head.

“Yes it is.”

She reaches to squeeze his hands, both of them and hard using his way of saying that no, he’s wrong, he’s goddamn wrong.

He sighs and squeezes her hands back but she takes a moment to let him go, as if needing to reiterate the words she can’t utter.

She cups her cheek and she leans into him a bit.

“It’ll be fine, princess.” he promises and when a lonely tear rolls down her cheek, he brushes it away and pulls her to his chest again.

She doesn’t get lost in her grief like before.

Instead she pulls away after a moment and writes something down again.

“Time to get to work.” he reads out loud, squinting his eyes a little, because of his own terrible eyesight which in turn makes her laugh a bit when she realizes why he’s making such a funny face.

_“I think you need glasses, grandpa.”_ she writes down.

“Hey!” he pretends to be angry, crossing his arms over his chest. “My eyes are perfectly fine.”

She smiles fondly at him before she writes yet another note.

The letters are so tiny, he has to literally bury his nose in the notebook to read that it said.

_“You were saying?”_

“Hey, that’s not fair, princess!” he pretends to be grumpy but she’s smiling again and he doesn’t want to ever see it leave her face-it may be sad, but it was there and he’d hold on to it for as long as he could.

“You’re blind and I’m mute, I think we make the perfect team.” she writes in bigger letters now and when he reads it his heart leaps yet again and his cheeks feel hot. 

When she sees his face, she realizes what she wrote and gets a little shy about it too, ducking her head away and blushing herself.

“We always did work well together, princess.” he says, once again taking her hand in his and squeezing it. “We can do it now too.”

And they do. 

It’s hard at first. 

Really hard. 

She can’t get the hang of ASL as fast as she wants to and she’s pushing herself, giving herself headaches and tiring herself. 

He hates it so he hides the study guide for a few days which frustrates her even more, but he doesn’t budge, not even when she tries to toss an apple in his direction and kick him out because she thinks she’s doing him a favor.

One of the worst and most desperate moments is when she breaks down but not because of sadness, but out of fear, anger and frustration.

She’s up on her feet and she’s mouthing words at him. 

He’s gotten quite good at reading her lips but she was too fast and too angry right now for him to catch on what she wanted to say. 

When she pushed his chest with both her hands he got the meaning.

“I told you, I’m not leaving.” he says, calm as a rock, steady on his feet.

She pushes again at him, mouthing _**“JUST GO!”**_ but he shakes his head and stumbles when she pushes at him again.

She tries to kick him outside the tent, desperately tries to talk, yell, except no sound comes out which makes her even more frustrated.

He stumbles back, almost falls on his ass, but refuses to leave.

Finally, she bawls her hands into fists and starts hitting his chest.

_**“No! No! NO!”**_ she’s mouthing and he lets her hurt him as much as she wants to because no physical pain could ever compare to her pain right now _**“NO!”**_

He grabs her shoulders finally and though she tries to fight him still, he just pushes her to his chest and holds her tight.

She struggles against him, still tries to hit his chest, then wraps her arms around him and cries.

They fall to the floor, she’s just that exhausted and completely spent and he holds her, wraps her in his arms like a baby, one arm under his knees and the other on her back. 

She rests her head on his chest and doesn’t fall asleep but just stays there and he uses her breaths fanning his neck to ground himself.

“I have an idea.” he says after what seems like hours later. 

She moves her head to him, eyes full of pain and sadness. He smiles, for a moment just barely holds himself not to lean down and kiss her forehead, then picks her up and carries her to the cot where he puts her in a sitting position.

He crosses his legs opposite of her and takes her hand.

“So ASL will take some time but while you master it, we can use other ways to talk, okay?” he takes her hand “We covered yes and no.” he squeezes her hand briefly, then rubs his thumb over her palm.

“Hungry” he taps the place just over the beauty mark near her lips and she blushes and he feels his own cheeks warm up but ignores it in favor of this being way more important than whatever feelings he had for her “Tired.” he taps her forehead. “Sleepy.” he cups her cheek and she leans into him a bit. “Got it?” 

She rubs her thumb over his hand and he smiles.

But he’s surprised when she pushes her notebook away and uses her hands, making an L shape with her thumb and index finger, then joins them together forming a W. 

He raises an eyebrow but then she points at his chest and keeps her eyes on him.

He doesn’t want to say he can’t figure it out right away so he lets his brain work it a moment before it dawns on him.

“What about you?” he asks and she nods with a smile, happy that he understood her. “I’m not sure what you mean here, princess?” she makes an annoyed face at him and crosses her arms over her chest.

“I told you, I’m fine.” he promises, once again rubbing his thumb over her wrist. She shakes him off, though, cupping his cheeks again and rubbing her finger over his dark circles, jutting her chin at him. 

“That’s nothing.” he promises “I’ll sleep when you’re better.”

She opens her mouth and he’s pretty sure that if she could, she’d scowl at him which makes him laugh. 

She points at herself with her index finger, then cups her own cheek and squeezes his hand hard.

“I won’t sleep-” he speaks out her words and she nods before she continues, jabbing her finger in his chest and cupping his cheek “until you sleep?” she gives him a victorious nod and he chuckles.

“Nice try, princess.” he stands up “But I gotta go check on the others and then I’ll come back with food, alright? Does that work?” she makes another face and he has to admit she’s quite adorable like this but he doesn’t let himself laugh, knowing she’ll just get more pissed off at it.

She hasn’t left the tent in almost a week and there were no signs she would. 

In her defense, she was still pretty weak and when he insisted they walked around the small place, she was wobbly on her feet and needed to lean on him which he definitely didn’t mind because it made him worry less.

She only saw Madi once and he left them for a few hours alone. 

When he was back Madi was gone and Clarke explained by writing down that they agreed she’ll need some time to get things together before it all went back to normal. 

Still, the kid came by usually early in the morning, for a few hours and he used that time to check on the others and take a shower but he lingered outside the tent, sitting on an old log and going through the ASL book or taking a short nap sitting while they had their time to catch up, after which he rushed back inside.

This time is no different except Madi had her turn this morning and she’s training with Gaia now while the others are spread around the camp fire, talking with the Children. 

He notices his sister is sitting way too close to Gabriel but he can’t even begin to think what this could mean, so instead he fills a plate for Clarke and goes right back in before someone notices him and starts asking him questions about her.

Or worse, in his sister’s case-about himself and his own well-being.

He finds her asleep, curled up on the cot and it makes him smile at how soft and at peace she looks so he takes off his cardigan and as usually throws it over her before residing to his uncomfortable chair near the cot.

His back has been way too cranky after spending days like that, though, so he decides to quietly settle on the ground next to her cot, letting his body relax against the hard ground. 

It’s still uncomfortable but it’s better and he can’t really give a damn about himself, not when she was going through hell and not like he ever really did care about his own well-being.

He starts falling, drifting off and he’s about to go into deep slumber when he feels someone’s fingers tapping his shoulder.

He jumps in a sitting position right away, speaking out loud.

“I’m here! I’m right here!” he only realizes how stupid he sounds when he looks around and sees her looking at him with a half-worried half-annoyed expression on her face. “What’s wrong?” he asks reaching for her hand “Are you okay?”

She furrows her eyebrows even more, pointing at him and then the ground.

“Why are you sleeping there?” she means and he gives her a shrug as he stands up and sits back on the chair which she clearly doesn’t approve of either because her hand is still on his wrist tugging him to her.

“It’s okay, Clarke.” 

She tugs his hand harder.

“Come here” she means when she gestures at the cot and he shakes his head.

“It’s too narrow and you won’t be comfortable if I lay next to you.” he tries but she stubbornly pulls him to her. 

“I’m okay.” he promises but she sits, and pushes his body between her legs, her hand expertly moving to his back and pressing on the bundle of nerves near his spine that were giving him the most trouble. 

“Hey!” he says through teeth “That’s not nice, princess.”

She raises an eyebrow and points at the bed again.

He finally resigns and lets her pull him to the cot.

Once he’s down, she throws his cardigan over him but because his shoulders are quite big and his arms very muscular, it falls almost immediately right off. 

He chuckles at the face she makes but lets her throw it over him again and move closer to him. 

When he feels her nose brushing his chest he sucks in his breath but now that they’re so tightly wrapped in their cocoon, he feels a little better.

“You’re really stubborn, you know that right, princess?” he asks her and she throws him a look but still buries her head in his chest, making him tense at first but not before she takes his hand and puts it on her back, giving him permission to touch her.

He smiles, pulls her closer and covers her head with his, but not before kissing her cheek which makes his entire face go red but he doesn’t care, can’t care because right now being with her in this moment, holding her in his arms and feeling her breath fanning his neck, he knows that despite it all, everything will be alright.


End file.
